5 Seasons and Joli Kobe

Mom and Dad were in Atlanta this weekend looking for remodeling ideas. As always, we got together to enjoy some unique Atlanta dining. Rather than hit the usual favorites, we decided to try a couple interesting restaurants recently featured in Southern Living, both located just off the Roswell Road exit on I-285. The first, 5 Seasons Brewing, offers some of the most highly-rated local beers and a menu with an eclectic assortment of entrees featuring exotic meats and all-organic ingredients. The second, Joli Kobe, is a Japanese bakery producing georgeous treats inspired by French patisseries. Though not instant favorites, both are quite good and well worth a try if you’re looking for an memorable dining experience.

Cinco de Mayo

We celebrated Cinco de Mayo in proper fashion as Frontera catered a lunch buffet for all of BarcoView. The buffet proceeded much like a Mexican-American rendition of the salad bar, with numerous ingredients available to roll your own concoctions. I constructed a couple of soft tacos and went about enjoying some excellent free cuisine. There was plenty of food for seconds, even though the vast majority of BarcoView turned out for the event.

I’ve been working at Barco for less than two months and this is the third food-related event we’ve had. We were served free ice cream a couple weeks ago and we’re due for free Subway in another couple of weeks. It’s a pleasant surprise coming from my internship, where we rarely enjoyed such company-sponsored events. If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to meet some people you otherwise wouldn’t encounter in your day to day routine.

Weekend, parents, etc.

My parents were in town this Saturday searching for home improvement ideas from the local speciality shops that only a sizeable city like Atlanta can provide (or so you’d think). From what I understand, they didn’t have much luck finding anything. Regardless, I got to enjoy some fine meals from Chin Chin V and Ray’s on the River. A made a point of taking them to our Fry’s; I don’t think they were impressed. I also wanted to take them to Jillian’s since it was in the same area, but the place was just packed.

Mom and Dad left on Sunday and I turned to web design and personal development. I reworked the integration between blog entries and gallery images such that the inlined thumbnails have been replaced with a simple image count (similar to how comments are handled) that will link to a full thumbnail gallery. The reasoning behind this is to save people page load times an generally improve the look of the site. Later on, I plan to make a full gallery where you can just browse pictures.

Along these same lines, I’ve started remastering pictures from my trip to China and I’ll eventually be removing all the old images and replacing them with the new. The new images benefit from common tweaks like auto-leveling that I never used when I originally posted the images last summer.

Finally, I’ve decided to pursue learning .NET. My initial project will be to create a Windows application that will set different wallpapers on each screen in a multi-monitor display. It’s a need of mine and I haven’t found any good applications for it yet. It should be a good learning experience. In the spirit of things, I downloaded and installed the Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Beta and made console and GUI "Hello World" applications. It’s ridiculously easy to do.

Ray’s on the River

Pretty much all of my immediate family came into town for my graduation. We all gathered at the Embassy Suites on Akers Mill and took a shuttle to one of my favorite local eateries, Ray’s on the River (named due to its proximity to the Chattahoochee River). I was quite pleased with my "Ginger Tuna" (first time for me). It was cooked like a tuna steak, which I’ve had only limited exposure to, but it had an unusual soy and ginger sauce. It was different than anything I’ve ever had and it was quite good.

Fellini’s Pizza

I ate at Fellini’s Pizza for the first time today with Titus. You generally get a lot of pizza for a pretty reasonable price. They even had my favorite topping, green olives. The price was right and the food was good, but the Fellini’s atmosphere can’t quite compete with the unique and varied stylings of the Mellow Mushroom.

Infrastructure Services

Things went about as well as yesterday; I met lots of interesting folks from Enterprise Storage, Server Support, and Voice & Data Networks. For example: Robert from the UNIX side of Server Support gets his background from the Marine Corps., where he set up Solaris servers that were used to coordinate offensives with Air Force divisions. I tried to learn a little from each person in turn, and I also tried to make a point of asking about experience, career options, and advice for a soon-to-be college grad. Each meeting took a little longer than scheduled, and I subsequently ended up leaving at about 5 P.M. again. That’s okay, though, because my tuna steak at Landry’s was quite a bit better than yesterday’s sirloin. I did go over my $25 meal limit, though. Whoops.

Help Desk

The good news is that my brief stay at the IT Help Desk vastly exceeded my expectations. Suzanne McCreedy met me in the lobby just before lunch and instructed me to report at approximately 12:00 P.M. At said time, I proceeded to the 8th floor of the Alabama Power Corporate Office to begin a series of handoffs that would take me through the RLC, PRC, CCC, and CPIC groups. At each station, a Help Desk employee would share a little bit of what he or she did. I got some good insight into the corporate side of IT as well as some honest opinions about the company along the way. I hope the next 1.5 days will build upon this positive experience.

The bad news is that my dinner was not so good. The closest two restaurants to the Birmingham La Quinta Inn are O’Charley’s and Lone Star Steakhouse. O’Charley’s was jam-packed; Lone Star was relatively empty. Now I know why. The soda machine was broken; my steak was undercooked, on top of being a poor cut of meat; and I dined alone, so the company was unremarkable.

Outback

My parents and I dined out at the Outback Steakhouse in Dothan for the first time in a while. I had the ribs and while they weren’t the best I’ve had from Outback, they were still very good.

Dine In

I didn’t really have any specific plans going into this Independence Day, but I tasked myself with organizing a cookout. Grammy and Granddaddy were invited (of course) and I went to Bruno’s to get the necessary groceries. We fixed pretty traditional stuff: hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, watermelon, and fries. (Mom also made an interesting potato and egg omelet to tide us over until dinner.) Everyone except Dad played Cribbage after dinner. Granddad and I formed one team; Grammy and Mom formed the other. (Our team won both games.)

I finished uploading all my pictures from China today as well. Good deal.

Mom and Dad visit

Mom and Dad came up for the weekend to visit. We met at my apartment around 1 PM and went out for a nice lunch at Nuevo Laredo Cantina. After lunch we shopped for new eyeglasses for me and located the hotel my parents would be staying at. We decided to eat at longtime-favorite Chin Chin V. I had sesame chicken and fresh fried rice. It was excellent. It was fairly late in the evening when we parted for the night but I did get the chance to watch “Smallville” with the guys.